My sweet little baking addiction

Banana cupcakes with caramel frosting

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 14:16:00 +0000

Found the recipe for these cupcakes at Call Me cupcake. It's a very inspiring swedish blog with lots of beautiful pictures and great recipes. On the site it's listed in cups, so here ir is in grams.

Banana cupcakes
- 28 cupcakes

•270 g siftet all purpose flour
•1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
•3/4 teaspoon baking powder
•3/4 teaspoon salt
•1 teaspoon powdered cinnamon
•170 g soft, unsalted butter
•300 g brown sugar
•3 large eggs
•4 very ripe, large bananas, mashed
•180 ml buttermilk
•1/2 teaspoon vanilla extracts
•120 g chopped pecan nuts (optional)

Notes: If you use salted butter, then leave out the salt, you otherwise need to add. If you don't have buttermilk you can make a good substitution by adding lemon juice to the milk. The mixture proportion is 1 tablespoon to 250 ml milk.

1. Preheat the oven to 175°C (350°F) and prepare the muffin tins with liners.
2. Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl.
3. Mix bananas, buttermilk and vanilla in another bowl.
4. Beat together butter and sugar, after which eggs are added one at a time.
5. Add the dry and the wet ingredients to the butter in 3 round, starting and ending with the dry.
6. Fill the liners and bake for 15-20 min. Let them cool completely before frosting them.

These cupcakes are really moist and stay this way for several days. I didn't add the nuts, but I think they would only make the cakes better.

Caramel frosting
This frosting is a Swiss meringue buttercream and it can be a bit heavy but has a incredibly delicious consistency and taste.

•6 egg whites
•240 g granulated sugar
•270 g soft, diced butter
Salted caramel to your liking.

1. Pour egg whites and sugar in a clean and heat proof bowl. Put the bowl in a double boiler, the water should be simmering. Whisk the sugar end eggs constantly so they don't curdle until the sugar is melted. Rub some of the mixture between your fingers to see if it's done.
2. Remove from heat, whip until white, fluffy and cool. This step can take up to 10 minutes.
3. Start adding the butter, very slowly. One dice at a time and wait with the next until the other one is fully incorporated. At some point it will look curdled, put just keep whipping - it will get smooth. If it is a bit runny, put it in the fridge for at little while and continue whipping.
4. Add caramel to the buttercream and whip until smooth.

Salted karamel

I also found the recipe for salted caramel at call me cupcake, go there to find it. It is REALLY good, so I definitely recommend trying it out. It taste just like Werthers if you know them.

Deep dark chocolate cookies

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 12:29:00 +0000

I've been looking for a cookie recipe that would be easy to make and didn't require a lot of ingredients. Then I found this recipe, and just the name alone got me hooked - deep dark chocolate cookies. They sound absolutely sinful and I just loove chocolate, so I had to try them. The fact that there's no butter or flour in them just added to their appeal. And let me tell you - they are absolutely delicious, like mouth orgasm delicious. I think this will be my go-to recipe for chocolate cookies. They have a crispy crust and a soft centre and the scent of chocolate when you bake them and when you open the cookie jar - mmm soo good.

I found the recipe over at Divine baking and she has a good picture step-by-step guide, so go over to her site and check the recipe out.
But do yourself a favor and try this recipe - I dare you to only eat one! I couldn't. I have a weak soul when it comes to chocolate.

Spelt bread rolls with sun-dried tomatoes

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 20:55:00 +0000

I love to bake and eksperiment with different kinds of flour and different things to put in the bread. Most of the time it's just a combination of the things in my cabinet.
These are spelt bread rolls with sun-dried tomatoes and here is the recipe:

Spelt bread rolls with sun-dried tomatoes
- 12 bread rolls

4 dl (1½ cup + 3 tbsp) water
25 g (0.88 oz) baker's yeast
125 g (1 cup) whole wheat flour
225g (1 3/4 cup) spelt whole wheat flour
225g (2 1/5 cup) spelt flour
50 g (1.7 oz) sun-dried tomatoes
a pinch of salt

Note: It's really difficult to convert between grams and cups/oz, so if you don't have a scale that measures in grams, add the flour a little at a time and see if you need to add more or less flour than the recipe calls for.

Dissolve the yeast in lukewarm water. Add the flour, salt and sun-dried tomatoes and knead for about ten minutes until the dough is springy and smooth. Let the dough rest for 30 minutes.
Split the dough in 12 pices and shape them in to bread rolls and let them rise on a baking sheat for 2 hours.
Preheat the oven to 250 ^oC (480 ^oF).
Moist the surface of the rolls with water and sprinkel with salt.
Put the bread rolls in the oven and turn it down to 210 ^oC (410 ^oF) and bake for 14-16 minutes.

While I bake bread, I spray them/it with water a few times within the first few minutes. It makes the bread rise better and the crust more crispy.

Chocolate tart with rosewater

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 15:56:00 +0000

Made this delicious chocolate tart for a party my sister had to celebrate her degree. This is the perfect desert for a chocolate lover like me! :) I used dark chocolate with 55% cocoa, but if you're not that into dark chocolate you can use some good quality milk chocolate instead. I found the recipe here and it's definitely not the last time I'm going to find inspiration there.

Im listing this recipe in grams - if you would rather like cups go to the original recipe. I changed the measurements a little because of the cups to grams conversions.
For the tart dough you'll need:

170 g all purpose flour
40 g cocoa
A pinch of salt
115 g unsalted butter
85 g sugar
1 egg yolk
1½-2 teaspoons of cream

Sift the flour, cocoa and salt in a bowl.

Mix butter and sugar in another bowl. After mixing it well add the yolk and the cream.
Add the flour/cocoa mix in the butter/sugar mix and shape the dough into a disc. Rap it in cling film and refrigerate for an hour.
Take the dough out of the fridge and let it rest for 10 minutes so it get soft enough do roll out. I usually roll any tart dough out between to sheets of baking paper. I find it easier than on a floured table. Cover the tart pan and refrigerate it for at least 30 minutes.
Blind bake the tart at 175 C (350 F) for 18-22 minutes.

For the ganache you'll need:

250 g dark chocolate
30 g unsalted butter
3 tablespoons corn syrup
a pinch of salt
2 dl cream
1½ tablespoons of rosewater

Heat the cream to boiling point in a saucepan.
Meanwhile finely chop the chocolate and mix it with the butter, syrup and salt in a bowl.
Pour the hot cream over and stir gently till it's all melted. Add the rosewater.
Pour the ganache in the tart crust and refrigerate until it's firm.

Enjoy with some berries on the side or but it in the tart and pour the ganache over it.
- and it tastes even better the next day :)

You can also use the ganache on top of cupcakes - just refrigerate it until it's firm enough to spread or pipe on the cupcakes.

First steps on my baking adventure...

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 22:11:00 +0000

So I've been reading a lot of blogs lately and was thinking about starting one myself since I'm about to begin some more serious baking.. So here it is!
The main content will be about cakes, but since I bake a lot of bread some of the post will be about that as well.

About me:

I'm 23 years old and I live in Aarhus, Denmark. I'm about to begin my last year as an undergraduate in molecular biology and after that I'm doing a masters in it as well. Biology - and especially the human body - has always been a mayor interest of mine, but it wasn't an obvious subject for my further education. I considered police officer, flower arranger, pilot and a lot of other things. Being a pilot was something I considered for a long time, but since I didn't have the money to pay for the education, it slowly fell down my wishlist. I finally decided to start molecular biology, which I'm happy I did and can't imagine doing something else.

I have always loved to bake - I hate cooking, but baking is a totally different world, which I would like to explore some more.

Hope you guys like my blog - please feel free to leave comments and give me feedback and hopefully I'll get better in time :)

Anna